Category: Sunday Contentments

In spite of having a raging head cold today, I’ve been hard at work. Above is a work-in-progress for a book cover I’m doing. I still have the hair to paint (I’m waiting for reference pics from the publisher, to be sure I get things right the first time) and some general touching up, but otherwise I’m pretty pleased with this one.

I like it when I’ve got paying work in, and not just for the obvious reasons. I also like being handed a challenge, and doing these books covers for LL-Publications has forced me to stretch my skill set frequently. This particular cover relied more on 2D digital painting than I usually do, and I’m hoping by the end of another year, I’ll be doing more straight up 2D painting and less 3D rendering. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, I got to do some nifty artwork today, and I’m happy about that. Hope your weekend is going just as well.

I’m getting to today’s post rather late. After yesterday’s karate test, I’m a little beat so I didn’t wake up until 9:30 this morning. That’s kind of late for me. However, I’ve still managed to make it a productive day. I’ve started some laundry, and have checked email. I’ve also recorded the podcast for this coming week, though I still need to edit the audio and produce the final episode. But before I do that, I’ve got some book covers to work on, which is how I plan to happily spend the rest of my afternoon. Yes, I said happily. I enjoy my work, and quite frankly I’m content to spend all day Sunday up at my desk, focused on the project du jour.

Do you love your job? There was a time when I hated mine. Back in the day, I made quite a bit of money as a graphic artist, but I worked for someone else, and while the pay was good, the hours and the work environment sucked. I don’t ever want to be in that position again. I’d rather earn my usual pittance these days and have the freedom to pick and choose from various jobs. The good news is, I seem to be getting more work these days, so that my pittance is growing. I’m hopeful that in another couple of years, I’ll be able to afford a cup of joe at Starbuck’s 😉

Just kidding. I do actually make more money than that. But really, it’s all about the work I get to do, which is far more creative than what I used to do, and the fact that I get to set my own schedule and don’t have to work with anyone breathing down the back of my neck. I’m happy with my current work situation, and I like the way I can be both mom and artist/writer at the same time. How many people really get to say that?

Anyway, it’s time for me to get back to work. Maybe I’ll post some rough drafts of my current job later today. We’ll see.

I was invited this weekend to do a reading in North Carolina at a fetish club, and just got home from that this afternoon. What a trip! I conned one of my best friends, Patricia, into going with me and we had a very weird, very fun road trip out to the middle of nowhere. Patricia drove her mother-in-law’s van while I navigated, and I swear we must have hit every single tiny back road in South Western Virginia and North Western Carolina. Along the way, we saw a lot of abandoned buildings. So many in fact that we started playing a game of “Zombie Apocalypse.” The game goes something like this…

Me: So Patricia, if the great epic Plague hits, and everybody dies off or becomes zombies, and you’re still left alive and unzombified, which of these houses would you go into to poke around and find supplies?

Patricia: Oh, all of them! I’m always curious to know what’s inside other people’s houses.

Me: Yeah, me too. Plus it’d be time to do some serious looting.

Patricia: Definitely.

(A few minutes pass…)

Me: There are a lot of abandoned houses out here.

Patricia: Yeah. I wonder why that is.

Me: I wonder if we could hole up in one of these abandoned houses if the zombies attacked.

Patricia: We should pick a good abandoned house, not one that looks like the roof is going to fall in.

Me: Yeah, because knowing us, the roof would most likely cave in while we were doing something like going to the bathroom.

(Several more minutes pass…)

Me: Wow, there are a hell of a lot of abandoned houses out here…

Patricia: Yeah… It’s like a ghost town out here.

Me: Or maybe a zombie town… (starts humming, then suddenly sings) ZOOOOMBIE! ZOOOOOMBIE! ZOOOOMBIE-BIE-BIE!! IN YOUR HEEEEEAD! IN YOUR HEEEEEEEAD! ZOOOOOMBIE! ZOOOOOMBIE! ZOOOOOOOOMBIE-BIE-BIE!

Patricia: Jeeze Louise, I haven’t heard the Cranberries in years. You’re really good at singing that song. In a crazed, scary sort of way, of course…

And so on. We made it to our destination Friday evening and spent the night with Beth Wylde, the author who set up the erotica reading. Thank you Beth for hosting us that night! Saturday morning, we all headed out for the fetish club for the reading. On our way there, Patricia and I decided we had to photograph at least one abandoned building we had seen. So we pulled over and photographed this abandoned church we found…

In between photographing abandoned buildings and playing “Zombie Apocalypse,” Patricia and I made our way to La Fortresse, a BDSM/fetish club in North Carolina where we did a reading with Beth and a number of other authors. My sometimes partner-in-crime, Nobilis Reed was there, reading from his latest book, Scouts, and I’d say we did a pretty good job of entertaining the audience. We had a good sized audience too, which was always nice. I did not take pictures of the club, to ensure the privacy of the members who were there, but it was definitely a well equipped facility, and we did the readings down in the dungeon, where they had plenty of St. Andrew’s crosses, a floor-to-ceiling web made out of sturdy chain, paddling stations, shackles and stocks, and other fun stuff. It was definitely worth the trip to see this place.

After the reading, Patricia and I headed out to visit the fantabulous sci-fi author/podcaster Mighty Mur Lafferty. We took every wrong turn we could getting there, and saw way more abandoned buildings than we would have liked at that point (because we were supposed to be headed for civilization, not going deeper into the zombie country). Finally, we ended up at a very large shopping center in Burlington, where we stopped and got a nice dinner at the Asian Bowl. We decided to hit Barnes and Nobles on the way out to get coffee, when I found a dead but still perfectly intact dragon fly that I insisted on picking up and taking back to the van to photograph. So there I was, walking into B&N, carrying this lovely dead dragon fly, and out of nowhere this tiny pixie child appears and starts dancing around me holding up a book. She stops and offers me the book and I see it’s entitled “Night of the Living Trekkies!” It came complete with a lurid cover of a zombified rotting Trekkie in full original Trek uniform. When I asked the bookstore pixie where she found it, she dreamily waved over to the sci-fi section, then danced around me again and thrust the book at me. Obviously I was supposed to take this book, so I did and the pixie disappeared. At which point, I realized I was holding the perfect birthday present for Mighty Mur Lafferty, and since we were headed over to her place for her birthday party…

So I bought the book, got some coffee, explained to the barrista why I was carting around a dead dragonfly (and got a nice white napkin for my photo background because the barrista thought it was cool to take pictures of dead bugs) and we headed back out again. After photographing the dragonfly and respectfully laying it to rest in a grassy median strip in the parking lot, of course.

We stopped at a hotel briefly along the way to Mur’s, got cleaned up, had a very embarassed hotel clerk walk in on us while we were cleaning up, laughed about that and then made our way to Mur’s place where we had a fabulous time eating the world’s best Boston Creme Pie (Mur’s birthday cake made by her amazing husband Jim) and playing Rock Band and chatting with people about zombies and abandoned buildings and dead bugs. While we were there, Jim pointed out a very huge, very neat moth on the front porch, and naturally I snapped a pic of that too.

After the party, we crashed back at the hotel, and headed home this morning, stopping along the way to photograph a few more abandoned buildings. We found…

This abandoned house…

Which came complete with its own abandoned shack…

And of course there was this really lovely abandoned grocery store…

The rest of the trip was nice and quiet. Lots of driving along back roads and discussion of doing another road trip in the fall when the leaves would be changing colors, the weather would be cooler, and the abandoned houses would be creepier. If we go on this road trip, we are definitely taking Mary with us, because we just know she’d be really good at playing “Zombie Apocalypse” with us.

And that was my weekend. Hope you had as much fun and adventure!

Am I too old for video games? I have to confess. I never got into video games until after I turned 40. Even though growing up, my family was one of the first in our neighborhood to have a computer (a TRS-80 that ran software from a tape recorder), we didn’t have much in the way of computer games. Yeah, the Trash-80 came with a clunky space shoot-’em-up that I recall, where you navigated the ship using the computer keyboard, and there was another game where you could explore an ancient tomb, but it was all text and no graphics, so it was kind of liking playing a video game blind-folded. Beyond that, we had no game console, no Atari, no Intellivision, no Commodore 64, and my dad wasn’t really into computer games so we never got any more than those two that came with the TRS-80.

I didn’t really get any experience with games until I started dating the Hubster. He and his brothers grew up with video games and played them compulsively. When I expressed some curiosity, Hubster set me up with a copy of Ultima, a fantasy adventure game that should have been right up my alley. But as it turned out, my interest in the game lasted all of about a month. The game was okay, but playing it seriously ate into my study time, and besides, killing monsters over and over, or being killed by monsters over and over, got pretty boring/frustrating after a while. No hack and slash for me, thank you.

I didn’t play video games again until I was pregnant. The Hubster and I knew we were getting ready to make a big financial change in our lives, and as such were feeling pretty cash-strapped. No dinners out, no movies, and since this was in the days before Video on Demand and Tivo and Hulu, not much on TV to watch. To keep us entertained, Hubster figured out how to attach a computer to the TV, and bought us some of the Myst games. The Myst games were definitely more my speed. Exploring a digitally created environment, solving puzzles, finding clues to a bigger mystery… It was great fun for many months. Then we reached the point where we really needed a better, more expensive TV to be able to see certain key details in the latest game; otherwise, we couldn’t play. And since we couldn’t afford said TV, our game days pretty much came to an end.

It was another few years before I ran into games again. This time, it was the Wii. I first saw the Wii when one of my brothers-in-law brought it over to a family gathering, along with a copy of Rayman Ravin’ Rabbids TV Party. This was a silly, bizarre, twisted game that appealed perfectly to yours truly. Plus, I found playing on the Wii to be far different from sitting on my assets in front of a computer; more interactive, more active, and more suited for playing with others, i.e. the kids. After my first taste of the Wii, I did some research and decided that I wanted to get one for our house. Lo and behold, the Hubster set us up with one that Valentine’s day.

Since then, I’ve gone through Rayman’s Ravin’ Rabbids, Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus, EA Sports Active, More Workouts for EA Sports Active, etc. Someone gave us a copy of Mario Block Party. Hubster picked up a copy of Boom Blox and some other games he thought the kids would enjoy. Even I started buying games, picking up copies of Just Dance and Mario Kart.

In the last two years, I’ve really come to appreciate having the Wii. I can work out with it, or just blow off some steam and relax. I can enjoy it with my kids. And I’ve discovered I can enjoy playing games by myself. My first fun game, solely for me? Rune Factory: Final Frontier.

Yes, another fantasy game, but unlike Ultima, not one filled with monster killing and dungeon crawling of the Ultima games? While Rune Factory does have it’s share of hack and slash, it also has a lot of other things going on too. In fact, I think Rune Factory was designed for people like me. If the monster kicks your ass, you don’t die, you just end up in the hospital the next day and you can get back in the game without having to start all over. And the focus isn’t on monster bashing. There’s farming to do, and black smithing, and cooking, and characters to interact with and befriend. It’s an immersive sort of game where you’re living this whole other life, and yours truly actually geeks out on that sort of thing.

Which is why I eventually got myself a DS this year. Princess already had one, and while researching games for her to play, I came to realize that there were a lot of DS games I’d like to play too, including the sequel to Rune Factory.

When it comes to video games, I still prefer RPGs to adventure and shooter games. That will probably never change. But now I also enjoy spending an evening with the kids crashing around the race course in Mario Kart or shakin’ our booties to Just Dance. And if I ever worry that all this game playing is causing my brains to leak out my ears, then I can just grab a copy of the latest Professor Layton game and bend my smarts around that.

So here I am, a 41-year-old woman, who has finally developed a taste for games. Who’d have thunk it? Regardless of how long it’s taken me to pick up this new hobby, I’m glad I have. Sometimes, I need a little down time, and game play gives me exactly that.

It’s a beautiful lazy Sunday morning here in La Casa de Madden. Here is a list of things that have me humming happily along…

I slept in until I actually felt like waking up, as opposed to crawling out of bed at the command of the early morning alarm clock.

I got to canoodle with the Hubster.

I went for a 30 min run/walk in my nifty new Vibram shoes. I’m up to 5 minutes of running at a time, with only a minute of walking in between bouts of running. And still no knee and hip pain!

I’ve got kittens crawling all over me. Hiccup and Toothless keep rubbing up against me and purring this morning. They’ve hit that adolescent stage, and are looking pretty danged handsome. I’d post a picture of those two rapscallions, but they never stand still long enough for me to snap a shot!

We’re going to Busch Gardens this afternoon to see the B-52s in concert! I love the B-52s. The girls and Hubster love the B-52s. It’s the first rock concert we’ve ever taken the kids to, and I have a feeling they’re really going to enjoy it!

The house is quiet, and I had my coffee and the morning paper. The peace and quiet are good.

I’m reading an outstanding book right now. I can’t share the title with you… yet. It hasn’t been published yet, and I’m reading it for work-related reasons, but I’m enjoying the hell out of it and will be pimping it to the high heavens when it’s finally published this fall.

Lots of stuff going on that make me feel good. Now to take a shower and start getting ready for the concert. Hope you have a wonderful Sunday!

Normally, summer is my least favorite season. I hate hot weather, and I live in an area that’s extremely humid, so I spend three months in a perpetual brain-melting sweat. Not fun. Add to that the fact that I live in major mosquito territory, I despise most amusement parks, I hate wearing shorts and most sunblocks make my skin sting, and you’ve got a recipe for misery that lasts from June until September.

However, I have kids, and my kids love summer, so rather than be a party pooper during their extremely long vacation, I’ve been working on finding things about summer I enjoy so I can share the season with them. For starters, I got a popsicle mold so we could enjoy home made popsicles on the back deck. That’s a lazy summer activity I can get into, especially when I can make popsicles out of pomegranite juice, or blueberry juice…

It’s been ages since I’ve had a water pistol, so when I found a bunch for sale at a store, I picked up a few. The girls have never had a water pistol, so I figured we were overdue. We broke three water pistols that afternoon (which leads me to ask, what does it take to get a decent water pistol these days?!), but we had several more (we bought a bulk pack, thankfully), and the girls and I spent an hour or so that afternoon chasing each other around the backyard and spraying each other until everyone was soaking wet.

Speaking of wet, we’ve got a pool in the neighborhood, so we went there on Friday, but not before making another trip to the store to pick up new pool floaties. I’ve never had my own pool floatie, so I finally decided I had to get one. Why on earth have I denied myself a pool floatie for so many years?! I got a big floating papasan chair for myself, a snorkel set for the Princess, and a big floating horse boat thing for Pixie. Princess is old enough and a good enough swimmer that I don’t have to worry too much that she’ll drown. And Pixie is calm enough this year that she’ll sit in her floatie for all of five minutes before starting to squirm and demand to get out, get in, use her sister’s snorkel, sit in my floatie, use someone stranger’s pool toys, etc. So I managed to get five minutes of just floating in the pool, in the shallow end, with the lead line for her floatie in hand before Pixie tried to drown herself the first time.

But probably best of all, we’ll all be doing the one activity I’ve always enjoyed doing in summer, and that’s reading. I picked a book for our evening reading this summer, “The First Summer Year” by Ian Kellam. I read this book when I was a child, and I’m glad I get to enjoy it all over again. I’m thinking that once I finish reading “Oryx and Crake,” I’ll pick up “Watership Down.” And once I finish reading “The First Summer Year” to the girls, I’m thinking of reading them Lloyd Alexander’s “The Book of Three.” Yep, summer reading; whether lazing in a lawn chair in the morning or on the couch in the afternoon or curled up in bed in the evening, it’s one of the best things about the season.

Hope everyone else has fun this summer!

I can’t believe the end of the school year is almost over. Virginia public schools run later into June than most schools anywhere else, so I’m sure most of you folks reading this are shaking your heads and going, “What do you mean, almost over? School’s been over!”

Anyway, we poor folks in Virginia have one more week left, and then… No more teachers! No more books! No more waiting at the bus stop! Huzzah! Because trust me, even though I’m the parent, I still feel like it’s me suffering through school every year.

So what will la Casa de Madden be doing this summer? Oh, this and that. I’ve got both girls signed up for a week of summer camp. And once again, we will be working on the garden. This year’s container garden is looking pretty impressive, even if I couldn’t get any vegetables to grow beyond the tomato and pepper plants. The herbs are doing good though, and I’m very pleased with that. Princess became fascinated with the herbs when I told her we could make tea with the chocolate mint plant we bought. I foresee us having many herbal tea parties this summer.

I also foresee ninjas in the backyard. I discovered yesterday that I have a McCall’s pattern for ninja costumes. Princess really wants to be a ninja. I had thought she would ask for a pink costume, but she has surprised me by asking for one in orange instead. Hm… a ninja in a blaze orange outfit? She will have to be a master of invisibility to pull that one off!

Ninja costumes also mean sewing, which is something I’m just aching to do. It’s been forever since I’ve done any sewing. Well, okay, I haven’t sewn since I got pregnant with Princess, so not quite forever. But I’ve got all sorts of patterns for costumes and home decorating, and get this! I’ve got “Elvis LIVES!” fabric in orange and avocado green! I’m making some laundry hampers out of that stuff!

Of course, this means I will need to teach Princess and Pixie to sew, so I foresee us having a couple afternoons a week of sitting inside, where it’s nice and cool, and cutting fabric and pinning patterns and occasionally accidentally sewing ourselves to whatever we’re working on. I never fail to do that whenever I work on a sewing project.

Beyond that, I’m thinking swimming and hiking and drawing and crafting and washing the car and water balloon fights and trips to the beach and the museum and picnics at the botanical gardens and maybe even a camping trip or two.

Basically, I’m looking forward to having my kids back for the summer, and doing things with them. And I look forward to having days free to go where we want and do what we do.

Here’s to a grand summer vacation.

Once again, Sunday finds me relaxing on the sofa with my netbook and a cup of tea close at hand. It’s been an exhausting week. I spent most of it trying to catch up on work after returning from Balticon 44 (from which my head is still reeling). Add to that Pixie’s birthday (she’s now four and all grown up, or so she tells me) and the attendant cupcake baking, present shopping, and special day out, and you’ve got one exhausted mama.

However, it’s still been a good week. In addition to Pixie’s big day, we also had another special event happen on Friday. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been raising a caterpillar that was given to us by our good friend Mich. Mich found a swallowtail butterfly laying eggs in her backyard and she brought over a parsley spring with one egg on it. We watched that tiny speck go from egg to minuscule caterpillar to giant caterpillar and then to chrysalis. It was all very fascinating, and the whole process finally came to fruition on Friday afternoon when the chrysalis opened and out came a butterfly. Here are a few pics of Papilio polyxenes, the Black Swallowtail butterfly (click on the picture to see a larger view).

The chrysalis, just a couple days before emergence. It started out very bright green then got darker. I was informed that the darker it got, the closer we were to having a butterfly come out.

The butterfly, shortly after emerging. It happened very fast. I came down from the office and checked on the chrysalis (we kept it in a butterfly habitat on our kitchen table) then headed up to the bedroom for a few minutes. When I came back, there was this huge, brightly colored miracle resting in the habitat. And man, was it vivid!

The butterfly, pumping up its wings in the habitat. The habitat is a sort of mesh hamper with a clear vinyl top that zips closed. We bought it at Lowe’s Hardware. It came with a certificate for Painted Lady Butterfly caterpillars. However, the same day this butterfly emerged, I found four more caterpillars on one of the plants on my back deck. So I moved them into the habitat that morning. It sort of made me feel like an apartment manager, waiting for one tenant, the swallowtail, to move out while the new tenants moved in.

Our final look at the Black Swallowtail butterfly. From what I’ve seen on the web, our butterfly was a female. We brought her out to the back deck and released her from the habitat. She then fluttered to the ground and stayed there for a while. We were getting ready to head out for dinner that evening, so we left her there. She was gone before we even got into the car. Good luck butterfly, wherever you are!

The new tenants in our butterfly habitat. This one is resting in Mich’s hand. She came over last night and I gave her two of our new caterpillars, along with a dwarf curry plant and a mallow plant. I suspect these are American Painted Lady caterpillars, but can’t say for certain at this point. This time around, I’m going to document their growth through the caterpillar and chrysalis stage so I’ll have more pictures to show. The whole experience was rather thrilling. Mich has some more swallowtail caterpillars at home and I think I just may take her up on her offer to get a couple of them for our habitat (and I may just break down and get a cheap aquarium as she suggested, especially if I find any more eggs or caterpillars in our garden).

Bottom line, this experience has set the tone for our summer. Princess and Pixie were fascinated with the caterpillars and checked on them every day. Myself, I can easily see us picking up a couple of butterfly and insect guides for the summer and spending time looking for what’s right in our own backyard. I’m even considering at this point working on making our backyard a certified Backyard Habitat. In any case, I think it’s safe to say this will be the Summer of Science.

Mich managed to capture some video of one of her butterflies coming out of the chrysalis. You can find it here. She set the camera up to tape while she was out, so skip ahead to about 24 minutes in to see the butterfly emerge.